Re: [tip:sched/core] sched: Fix race in task_group()

cwillu
2012-10-18T20:50:55Z

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Luis Henriques
<luis.henriques@canonical.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 12:23:38PM +0200, Stefan Bader wrote:
>> On 18.10.2012 10:27, cwillu wrote:
>> > On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 8:21 AM, tip-bot for Peter Zijlstra
>> > <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
>> >> Commit-ID: 8323f26ce3425460769605a6aece7a174edaa7d1
>> >> Gitweb: http://git.kernel.org/tip/8323f26ce3425460769605a6aece7a174edaa7d1
>> >> Author: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
>> >> AuthorDate: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 13:36:05 +0200
>> >> Committer: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
>> >> CommitDate: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:58:20 +0200
>> >>
>> >> sched: Fix race in task_group()
>> >>
>> >> Stefan reported a crash on a kernel before a3e5d1091c1 ("sched:
>> >> Don't call task_group() too many times in set_task_rq()"), he
>> >> found the reason to be that the multiple task_group()
>> >> invocations in set_task_rq() returned different values.
>> >>
>> >> Looking at all that I found a lack of serialization and plain
>> >> wrong comments.
>> >>
>> >> The below tries to fix it using an extra pointer which is
>> >> updated under the appropriate scheduler locks. Its not pretty,
>> >> but I can't really see another way given how all the cgroup
>> >> stuff works.
>> >>
>> >> Reported-and-tested-by: Stefan Bader <stefan.bader@canonical.com>
>> >> Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
>> >> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1340364965.18025.71.camel@twins
>> >> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
>> >
>> > I just finished bisecting a crash on boot to this commit; booting with
>> > "noautogroup" brings it back.
>> >
>> > 3.5.4 is the latest -stable that still boots, and none of the 3.6 rc's
>> > boot at all.
>> >
>> > Photo of the bug (3.6.0next is 3.6 + btrfs's for-linus):
>> > https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-0DY-YYhgvzs/UHdB-BQdzMI/AAAAAAAAAEg/QhY9rgxnv98/s811/2012-10-11
>> >
>>
>> On a very quick glance I wonder whether there might be a case where sched_fork
>> goes into set_task_cpu with a different cpu than the current but has not yet
>> task_group.sched_task_group set to something valid...
>>
>>
>
> I was looking at another bug report [1] which may be related with this
> issue. Basically, it looks like there is a race window where
> resetting sched_autogroup_enabled will cause a crash on
> shutdown/reboot. In the bug report, the user has added:
>
> echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/sched_autogroup_enabled
>
> to /etc/rc.local. This will cause a NULL pointer dereference during
> shutdown (and it is reproducible with mainline kernel 3.7.0-rc1).
>
> By using the kernel parameter noautogroup I *wasn't* able to reproduce
> this issue.

Ah, yes, that makes sense. I just checked, and the machine has
"kernel.sched_autogroup_enabled = 0" in /etc/sysctl.conf, which would
have the same effect.